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George C. Marshall - Biographical

George
Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880-October 16, 1959),
America's foremost soldier during World War II, served as chief
of staff from 1939 to 1945, building and directing the largest
army in history. A diplomat, he acted as secretary of state from
1947 to 1949, formulating the «Marshall Plan», an
unprecedented program of economic and military aid to foreign
nations.

Marshall's father owned a prosperous coal business in
Pennsylvania, but the boy, deciding to become a soldier, enrolled
at the Virginia
Military Institute from which he was graduated in 1901 as
senior first captain of the Corps of Cadets. After serving in
posts in the Philippines and the United States, Marshall was
graduated with honors from the Infantry-Cavalry School at Fort
Leavenworth in 1907 and from the Army Staff College in 1908. The
young officer distinguished himself in a variety of posts in the
next nine years, earning an appointment to the General Staff in
World War I and sailing to France with the First Division. He
achieved fame and promotion for his staff work in the battles of
Cantigny, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne. After
acting as aide-de-camp to General Pershing from 1919 to 1924, Marshall served
in China from 1924 to 1927, and then successively as instructor
in the Army War College in 1927, as assistant commandant of the
Infantry School from 1927 to 1932, as commander of the Eighth
Infantry in 1933, as senior instructor to the Illinois National
Guard from 1933 to 1936, and as commander, with the rank of
brigadier general, of the Fifth Infantry Brigade from 1936 to
1938. In July, 1938, Marshall accepted a post with the General
Staff in Washington, D. C., and in September, 1939, was named
chief of staff, with the rank of general, by President Roosevelt. He became general of the army
in 1944, the year in which Congress created that five-star
rank.

In his position as chief of staff, Marshall urged military
readiness prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, later
became responsible for the building, supplying, and, in part, the
deploying of over eight million soldiers. From 1941 he was a
member of the policy committee that supervised the atomic studies
engaged in by American and British scientists. The war over,
Marshall resigned in November, 1945.

But Marshall could not resign from public service; his military
career ended, he took up a diplomatic career. He had been
associated with diplomatic events while chief of staff, for he
participated in the conference on the Atlantic Charter
(1941-1942), and in those at Casablanca (1943), Quebec (1943),
Cairo-Teheran (1943), Yalta (1945), Potsdam (1945), and in many
others of lesser import. In late 1945 and in 1946, he represented
President Truman on a special mission to
China, then torn by civil war; in January, 1947, he accepted the
Cabinet position of secretary of state, holding it for two years.
In the spring of 1947 he outlined in a speech at Harvard University
the plan of economic aid which history has named the
«Marshall Plan».

For one year during the Korean War General Marshall was secretary
of defence, a civilian post in the U. S. Cabinet. Having resigned
from this post in September, 1951, three months before his
seventy-first birthday, he retired from public service,
thereafter performing those ceremonial duties the public comes to
expect of its famous men.

Selected Bibliography

Acheson, Dean, «General of the Army George Catlett
Marshall», in Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known,
pp. 147-166. New York, Harper, 1961.

Marshall, George C., Report on the Army, July 1, 1939, to June
30, 1941: Biennial Report of General George C. Marshall.
Washington, The Infantry Journal, 1941.

Marshall, George C., Selected Speeches and Statements of
General of the Army George C. Marshall, ed. by H.A. De Weerd.
Washington, The Infantry Journal, 1945.

Marshall, George C., The Winning of the War in Europe and the
Pacific: Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff of the United
States Army, July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1945, to the Secretary of
War. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1945.

Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History.
New York, Harper, 1950.

United States Army in the World War 1917-1919: Military
Operations of the American Expeditionary Forces. Washington,
Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1948. Volumes 8 and
9 describe the battles of St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne.

This autobiography/biography was written
at the time of the award and first
published in the book series Les
Prix Nobel.
It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.